1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page i Womanist Ethics 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page ii Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice Series Editors Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas Published by Palgrave Macmillan “How Long this Road”: Race, Religion, and the Legacy of C. Eric Lincoln Edited by Alton B. Pollard, III and Love Henry Whelchel, Jr. White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity By James W. Perkinson The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God By Sylvester Johnson African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod By Anthony B. Pinn Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church By Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr. Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion By James W. Perkinson Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count Among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue: Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In By Anthony G. Reddie Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil By Emilie M. Townes African American Religious Life and the Story of Nimrod Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Allen Callahan (forthcoming) Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice through Reparations and Sovereignty By Jennifer Harvey (forthcoming) Black Theology and Pedagogy By Noel Leo Erskine (forthcoming) 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page iii Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil Emilie M.Townes 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page iv WOMANIST ETHICS © Emilie M. Townes, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7272–9 hardback ISBN-10: 1–4039–7272–9 hardback ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7273–6 paperback ISBN-10: 1–4039–7273–7 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Townes, Emilie Maureen, 1955– Womanist ethics and the cultural production of evil / Emilie M. Townes. p. cm.–– (Black religion, womanist thought, social justice) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7272–9 (alk. paper)––ISBN 1–4039–7273–7 (alk. paper) 1. Christian ethics. 2.Womanist theology. I. Title. II. Series. BJ1278.F45T69 2006 170.82––dc22 2006043253 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2006 10987654321 Printed in the United States of America. 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page v Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so those may run who read it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Habakkuk 2: 2–3 You should never carry around your own prison. Ronne Hartsfield December 11, 2001 All of us have a tremendous capacity for evil. All of us . But that is not the end of the story. We also have an extraordinary capacity for good. Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu February 6, 2002 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page vi for Oliver McClean and George F.Moore 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page vii Contents Preface: On Memory viii Preface x Acknowledgments xiii 1 The Womanist Dancing Mind: Cavorting with Culture and Evil 1 2 Sites of Memory: Proceedings too Terrible to Relate 11 3 Vanishing into Limbo: The Moral Dilemma of Identity as Property and Commodity 29 4 Invisible Things Spoken: Uninterrogated Coloredness 57 5 Legends Are Memories Greater than Memories: Black Reparations in the United States as Subtext to Christian Triumphalism and Empire 79 6 To Pick One’s Own Cotton: Religious Values, Public Policy, and Women’s Moral Autonomy 111 7 Growing like Topsy: Solidarity in the Work of Dismantling Evil 139 8 Everydayness: Beginning Notes on Dismantling the Cultural Production of Evil 159 Notes 167 Index 197 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page viii Preface On Memory i begin with memory a particular memory i am still young—7 or 8 or 9 years old i walk from my school—fayetteville street elementary up the street to the biology building at ncc at that time it had no “u” the biology building is where my mother works i sit outside her class room cross-legged listening to her teach marveling at the sound of her words as i also learn biology listening to her lecture captured by the precision of her enunciation the ease of her movement through technical biological tidbits the rapid-fire give and take of questions and answers the prodding of creativity about life and its meaning as it lay before students in the death of the dissecting table knowing without a doubt that she loves not only talking about amoebas and the glycerinerated stalks of the vorticella but also wanting students to learn to love biology but more importantly learn to love learning its potent legacy this little emilie memory resides in me deeply because it was sitting outside my mother’s classroom that i first learned about teaching and learning it is, in fact, both a precious memory and a demanding memory because although i do not want to be my mother 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page ix Preface on Memory ix i do want to teach and learn as she did and did until her death it is this act of loving what she did that i want to remember and enact in my own teaching and scholarship i want to create, with a good bit of help from students and colleagues an atmosphere that truly cherishes teaching and learning to care not only about ideas but the consequences of holding them of living them of losing them of gaining them such is the power of memory rooted in me rooted in all of us living . 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page x Preface This work is classic Emilie Townes. It is poetic and prophetic, words dance as they coax, berate, and persuade. And always we not just dis- cover but encounter hope directly in the arguments and artistic prose, but sometimes hope comes through her writing side ways. If one is not alert, one can miss the blessing. Clearly this book is dancing words and, moreover, a thinking book. Actually, it stands (dances?) within the courageous and creative tradition of enslaved African Americans who approached the Bible as a talking book. They could not read, at least the majority of the ancestors—Emilie Townes’s ancestors. So they listened for the words to dance from a speaker’s mouth into their ears and hearts. For them and for Townes the deployment and crafting of words mean something for life and death. We imagine that Townes somehow listens as she writes. She hears with the head and spirit of an audience long gone, crossed over but whose souls linger on this side. She hears with her own head and spirit as the audience who is listen- ing back to her talking book that the reader has before us. There is a lot of dancing, talking, and hearing back in this text. The power of the presentation can only be further enhanced by performing the chapters of this work. Writing, here, is fighting and loving and visioning that a better world is possible whether in the U.S.A. or Brazil. Has anyone in the academy ever choreographed a text? Townes knows her womanist self. That is why the writing is so powerful and so meaningful and so challenging. Out of her self and her community’s context, universality emerges with the force of a hun- gry bear ending a hibernation. Black women folk in the U.S.A. can paint a canvass with the evils experienced by them in this world, and the impact on them, their children, adopted children, and the men in their lives, too. And this is what this book is about: the cultural pro- duction of evil. Evil is spirit but it is also principalities and powers on earth. Evil invades and warps our memory, both historical memory 1403972737ts01.qxd 4-5-07 09:40 PM Page xi Preface xi and the site of memory. What happens when evil is so terrible that one fears the telling? Is this what stunts the dancing of the words on a page or a community’s gathering to dance like psalmist David or the West African derived drum-based Candomble of Brazil? Or maybe evil is the popular stereotype of the African North American woman. Sometimes she is depicted as the mammy who is super (black) woman—taking charge of the master’s house, nursing his children, running his affairs, keeping other black folk in line, and, above all as Malcolm X said, loving the master and his offspring more than the black woman loves herself.